This is a very simple way of comping a chord progression exclusivly with triads in spread voicings.

A spread triad is created by octavating the middle note of a close triad, so C E G becomes C G E. The same for the inversions, E G C becomes E C G and G C E becomes G E C.

close triad     spread triad
C E G            C G E
E G C            E C G
G C E            G E C

First learn the different ways to play spread triads on the fretboard, many voicings have two or three ways they can be fingered on the guitar, see my pdf.

I recommend to play up and down the spread triads through all inversions over one chord. Do this in many different keys.

For comping a standard progression I limited myself to major, minor and diminished spread triads. I didn´t include the augmented triads because for me it works as a sort of alteration (dominant 7/b13) and I wanted to keep a very basic sound without any options and alterations.

So for all major 7th (also major 7/9/13 and even maj7#11) AND dominant 7 chords (also dom7/9/13 or b9/b13 or any kind of alteration) I use the basic major triad in spread voicing.
All minor 7th chords (min7/9/11/13) become the basic min spread triad.
The diminished spread triad serves for halfdiminished (mi7/b5) AND diminished 7th chords. The basic triad for both chords is a diminished, the difference between halfdiminished and diminished is the 7th.

The nice thing about these spread triads is the open, clear, classical, almost church-like character. Especially when you are able to play more than one inversion per bar. Try to play two adjacent inversions on beat 1 and 3 or even four inversions on every beat of the bar.

See my demonstration how you could use basic spread triads on `Alone together´ for comping. In real life situations I love to use those voicings together with all kinds of other chordal concepts in order to create contrast.

Here´s the pdf

So… this is the first entry in my blog for the improvising guitarist. I want to start with a very simple idea to create a piano-like comping of your single-note lines when improvising in a modal context on a minor 7 chord.

The thing with `self-comping´on the guitar is that you can not delegate the comping-soloing roles to the two hands like a pianist. The left hand has to manage playing chords and melodies at the same time. It is obvious that the more fingers you need to play a chord the less fingers you have left over to play lines. So what could be more practical than one finger chords?

When you harmonize a major scale and it´s modes (in this case dorian) with three-note-voicings in fourth you get five voicings out of seven which consist exclusively of natural fourths. The other two voicings contain augmented fourths. They sound great but you need more than one finger to play them.

The four low strings on the guitar are tuned in natural fourths, so all five natural-fourths-voicings can be played on string groups E-A-D and A-D-G with one finger.

I think of two areas on the fretboard where these voicings are located, one around the root note on the A-String (EX. 1) and one around the root note on the low E-String (EX. 2). Check the pdf for the voicings and their location on the fretboard.

Check my video to hear and see an improvisation with extensive use of the one finger chords on a standard modal progression used in tunes like `So What´ or `Impressions´.

Here´s the pdf.